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The Venturing crew is sponsored by a community organization such as a business, service organization, school, labor group, or church. The chartered organization is responsible for selecting leadership, providing a meeting place, and promoting a good program. The chartered organization representative is the liaison between the crew and the Chartered Organization. The crew may elect to be all-male, all-female, or Co-Ed.

The crew committee is a group of adults, led by the crew committee chair, who guide the crew program and activities and manage record keeping, finance, leadership recruitment, and registration. The crew must have at least five adults registered with the crew to become a legitimate crew. The crew is led by youths who are elected to the positions of president, one or more vice-presidents, secretary, treasurer, quartermaster, guide, and historian. Other positions in the Venturing crew may exist, such as activity chair. The adult adviser and associate advisers provide guidance while allowing the youth to lead the crew.

A boy scout or girl scout troop are by necessity, structured environments.  Often run by adults under the auspices that they youth are in control, however more often than not, it is adult operated with youth input.

A Venturing Crew, by definition, maintains a very flexible atmosphere. It is run by the youth with advisory input from the adults, but it is not run by adults. The failures our the youth are their failures. The adults guide them to try again and learn to be successful – ADULTS IN NO WAY OPERATE THEIR PROGRAM.

A Venturing Crew is a fun-filled, co-ed organization. It is created by the American Legion, organized and executed by teens, for teens, designed to help develop leadership and teamwork through outdoor adventures and unique outings and activities. Although co-ed, the Venturing program started in 1998 and is an outdoor based version of Exploring.

Venturing is a young adult development program of the Boy Scouts of America for young men and women who are at least 13 1/2 (or have completed the eighth grade) through 20 years of age.

Venturing’s purpose is to provide positive high adventure experiences to help young people mature and to prepare them to become responsible and caring adults.

Venturing is based on a unique and dynamic relationship between youth, adult leaders, and organizations in their communities. Local community organizations establish a Venturing crew by matching their people and program resources to the interests of young people in the community. The result is a program of exciting and meaningful activities that helps youth pursue their special interests, to grow, to develop leadership skills, and to become good citizens.

Venturing crews can specialize in a variety of avocation or hobby interests. Venturing Crew 75 Operates as a Outdoor Speciality Crew, focusing on the Venturing Ranger Award, which can be found here.

What a Venturing Crew IS NOT – A group of (exclusive) older teens in a troop setting doing “older” activities that younger scouts are not allowed to do. Our base is those aged 13 to 20 seeking out a bold new program that they nurture and execute successfully.

Venturing is a youth development program of the Boy Scouts of America for young men and women who are 13 (and have completed the eighth grade) through 20 years of age.

Venturing’s purpose is to provide positive experiences to help young people mature and to prepare them to become responsible and caring adults.

Venturing is based on a unique and dynamic relationship between youth, adult leaders, and organizations in their communities. Local community organizations establish a Venturing crew by matching their people and program resources to the interests of young people in the community. The result is a program of exciting and meaningful activities that helps youth pursue their special interests, grow, develop leadership skills, and become good citizens.

Goals

Young adults involved in Venturing will •Learn to make ethical choices over their lifetimes by instilling the values in the Venturing Oath and Code

•Experience a program that is fun and full of challenge and adventure

•Become a skilled, training and program resource for Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and other groups

•Acquire skills in the areas of high adventure, sports, arts and hobbies, youth ministries, or Sea Scouting

•Experience positive leadership from adult and youth leaders and be given opportunities to take on leadership roles

•Have a chance to learn and grow in a supportive, caring, and fun environment

Methods

The methods of Venturing have been carefully chosen to meet the needs of young adults.

Leadership

All Venturers are given opportunities to learn and apply proven leadership skills. A Venturing crew is led by elected crew officers. The Venturing Leadership Skills Course is designed for all Venturers and helps teach in an active way to effectively lead.

Group Activities

Venturing activities are interdependent group experiences in which success is dependent on the cooperation of all. Learning by “doing” in a group setting provides opportunities for developing new skills.

Adult Association

The youth officers lead the crew. The officers and activity chairs work closely with adult Advisors and other adult leaders in a spirit of partnership. The adults serve in a “shadow” leader capacity.

Recognition

Recognition comes through the Venturing advancement program and through the acknowledgement of a youth’s competence and ability by peers and adults.

The Ideals

Venturers are expected to know and live by the Scout Oath, Scout Law, and Code. They promise to be faithful in religious duties, treasure their American heritage, to help others and to seek truth and fairness.

High Adventure

Venturing’s emphasis on high adventure helps provide team-building opportunities, new meaningful experiences, practical leadership application, and life-long memories to young adults.

Teaching Others

All of the Venturing Awards require Venturers to teach what they have learned to others. When they teach others often, Venturers are better able to retain the skill or knowledge they taught, they gain confidence in their ability to speak and relate to others and they acquire skills that can benefit them for the rest of their lives as a hobby or occupation.

Ethics in Action

An important goal of Venturing is to help young adults be responsible and caring people, both now and in the future. Venturing uses “ethical controversies” to help young adults develop the ability to make responsible choices that reflect their concern for what is a risk and how it will effect others involved. Because an ethical controversy is a problem-solving situation, leaders expect young adults to employ empathy, invention, and selection when they think through their position and work toward a solution of an ethical controversy.

Crew Activities

What a Venturing crew does is limited only by the imagination and involvement of the adult and youth leaders and members of the crew-sail the Caribbean, produce a play, climb a mountain, teach disabled people to swim, or attend the Olympics. All these adventures and more are being done today by Venturing crews and ships across the country. All that is needed are concerned adults who are willing to share a little bit of themselves with today’s youth-tomorrow’s leaders.

What Youth Want

Research has revealed these major points: •High school students have many vocational and avocational interests.

•Teenagers want a broader experience that provides practical “hands-on” experience and is tailored to their cultural backgrounds.

•Teenagers want to belong to a group that provides a “safe haven” from which to address the youth development issues that affect them. These issues include experimentation; moving from dependence to interdependence, social relationships, psychological changes and sexual maturity, and a re-evaluation of values.

Each year, the Crew hosts a “Naked and Afraid” weekend in which they are hardly Naked, and some are terrified. Naked to the crew means a Knife, a Rope, and a Nalgene. This years theme is based on the book “Lord of the Flies”

No specifics here, cause we can’t tell them what is going to happen. But we can tell you that the events that play out brings people back from the far reaches of the United States to take part.

If you want to see this years premise, watch the Lord of the Flies.

Most people know about the Boy Scouts, those boys known for their adventurous spirit, going on camp-outs and helping the community with pride and honor, but most people don’t know about another similar program, Venturing.

A Venture crew is the same as a Boy Scouts troop, but with a larger focus on high-adventure activities, first aid, and leadership training. It is only one of two co-ed scouting programs, and since Venturing crews are typically smaller, Venturers also do more personal events, like a game night or bowling. 

 Another difference between the two organizations is the uniforms. While the Boy Scouts have a khaki shirt with olive pants, a neckerchief, and merit badge sashes, Venture uniforms have dark green shirts, charcoal gray pants and socks, and don’t require neckerchiefs or merit badge sashes. 

 A Scout also progresses through the rankings differently between the two. Boy Scouts start at New Scout (no rank), then earn Scout, Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, Star, Life, and Eagle, the highest honor in Scouts. They need to get merit badges as well, a sign of mastery in key skills, then need to hold an executive position for a few months to show leadership. The big titles are Senior Patrol leader, the student leader of a troop, Assistant Senior Patrol leader, Junior Assistant Scoutmaster, and Troop Guide. An example of a boy scout camp out would be: We arrived about eightish, we unpack troop gear, start dinner, which is normally hotdogs on the first night. After dinner and everyone is done unpacking, we all go to bed. The cooking crew wakes up around six and starts breakfast for their patrol. After the meal we work on any book work or merit badges that we could be doing on the campout.

With Venturing it’s a little different. Instead of ranks, Venturers earn awards, starting at Venture, then Discovery, Pathfinder and Summit, Venturing’s premier award.For the Venture award, a Venturer needs to complete some basic paperwork and go to a Venture event outside the meetings, way more simple than first joining Scouts. However, for the next award, Venturers need to complete CPR training, complete basic leadership training, go on a 24 hour event in Venturing, and complete a tier 2 or 3 adventure, activities that require extensive planning and coordination. An example of a venturing campout would be: we get to the campsite around noonish, if we didn’t have lunch on the road we have it at the site. After the meal we go on the planned adventure. The only venture campout I have been to was the Mackinac island rendezvous. There was both boy scouts and venture crew. But the crews were separated from the scouts.

 Another large difference between the Boy Scouts and Venturing is who’s invited to partake. In the Scouts, troops are only for boys while girls take part in the Girl Scouts. In Venturing, the crews are co-ed, allowing for Girl and Boy Scouts to join the adventures. As for age, anyone  14 to 21 can partake in Venturing. When Scouts turn 18, they formally age out of the program. 

Even in organizations these groups are different. The troop meets weekly and Venturing meets once a month. In Scout meetings, Scouts work on merit badges, prepare for campouts, plan service events, and grow as a group. Venturing meetings plan out the entire month’s activities, which tend to be similar to Scouting events, but with less focus on service and merit badges and more focus on adventures and outdoor skills.

 Mr. Mitchem, our crew adviser said “Regardless of the common interest of the group, it is the goal of the group to use the group function to learn life skills needed to make plans, communicate with others outside the group, recruit others, engage in ethical controversy discussions, actively help one another develop into caring citizens of their community.” 

The BSA helps serve kids of all ages with programs they’ll enjoy. For some, a more regimented, uniform group like the Boy Scouts is better, while some kids thrive in the open-minded, adventuring groups such as Venturing. Each program is unique and is always looking to better the young minds of this country.